If you didn't, I had no memory of them at all. I'm a 30-something true crime writer living in North America with my hubby & two fur babies https://thewickedtruthblog.com/membership Follow More from Medium Fatim Hemraj 8-Year-Old Boy Solves His Own Mom's Murder Fatim Hemraj Teen Murders Her Best Friend for $9 Million Dollars Jonathan Harker need your help for this. By the restaurant door was a young woman with a baby, trying to get a ride. Investigation Discovery referred to Rhoades' truck as a "rolling torture chamber," based on what was kept inside this enclosure. And who's going to believe him? ", Inside the briefcase, officers found dildos, alligator clips, handcuffs, leashes, and whips. 97.107.136.113 She's shown sitting in Rhoades's truck wearing a gray hoodie. Murder Victim. Instead, police suspect he held the teenager captive for at least two weeks, subjecting her to sickening acts of torture and rape, before he strangled her to death with a garrote and dumped her corpse in an abandoned barn in Illinois. And if it happened, she could be found. In January 1990, Douglas Zyskowski and his wife Patricia Candace Walsh were hitchhiking to Georgia from Seattle on their honeymoon when they accepted a ride from Robert. His eyes were greeted with a shocking scene. He's there with his neatly pressed shirt and colossal arrogance. "So was the trucker I met a true psychopath?" The couple had just recently wed and were hitchhiking to Georgia from Texas. Rhoades. Robert Ben Rhoades (defendant), pursuant to negotiations with the State, on September 11, 1992, pled guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to imprisonment for natural life. They were stringing crime tape around the Dumpster just as another state trooper rolled into the lot. The trucker bought us chicken-fried steak, chatted amiably, and let us nap in the cab while he drove. "What I find interesting is that he told you about the body of the girl and talked about the Laughing Death Society while he was still driving. Games People Play was a bible for Rhoades. On April 1, 1990, Roberts murder spree finally came to an end. If there was any way to connect my story to Rhoades, it would be through the body of the girl in the Dumpster. Truck stop killer: Robert Ben Rhoades, described by authorities as a sadistic killer, was first jailed in 1990 for killing a 14-year-old runaway girl in Illinois (left), also pleaded guilty to. The memory was twenty-seven years old, and nothing in it was actionable. She shook her head; then her eyes clouded some. While in prison, Robert pled guilty to the murders of Patricia and Douglas. She looks happy. He shows it and asks what they think is going on. What put him away for life, though, was the rape and murder of Regina Walters, a 14-year-old girl from Pasadena, Texas. On the show, she talked of feeling a lot of guilt. Thank you very much in advance. robert ben rhoades, serial killer, torture, trucker Caught by Accident Robert Ben Rhoades. Reading it, I found it hard not to hear the man telling me to "run.". She had a stocking down her throat, I think. Her hair, long at the time of her abduction, had been clumsily cut short. Adhering to my rule (that the only safe truck was a moving truck) meant I woke when a truck took an exit. What is known about him in the 1980s is murky. The remarkable thing is that when she did, she didn't dump him. The Daily Nonpareil reports that Robert Ben Rhoades was set to be free on work release when Illinois police identified the body of 14-year-old Regina Walters. They found her near a Dumpster behind the restaurant at the Gateway Travel Plaza in Breezewood. "He's 67. The FBI believes that Rhoades was more than just a criminal who was caught keeping a woman in bondage they maintain that he was a ruthless serial killer who had been preying on victims since 1975. Women couldn't really get on the "zoo channel," as they called it then, because the sound of their voice would trigger twenty minutes of crass chatter. I had to jump when you slowed down because you were going to rape me. In the end, Debra was able to escape Roberts fury and worked on moving on. The dissonance between my emotional world and the one around me was still too great, and soon I left again, but in a more sanctioned way. Robert Ben Rhoades, 59, was linked by DNA in 2003 to the murder of 24-year-old Patricia Candice Walsh. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1905de5cd6c356 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Ex-Wife Of Serial Killer Robert Ben Rhoades Speaks Out | Evil Lives Here: After the Evil. I needed to find rides and usually couldn't get into the restaurant. While I was hitchhiking, he was driving. To keep creating Between Pennal and Rhoades, it's Rhoades they believe. The case of Robert Ben Rhoades serves as an excellent example of the type and nature of case to which VICAP s services would provide critical assistance and support. Debra wanted to give her money or do something. He turned her slowly toward the girl and pointed. ", "Oh no, not at all!" I had been a drifter. The glasses were the same, the curve of the cheekbone, and something about the expression, particularly the set of the mouth. "I just want you to know," he said, looking me squarely in the eye, "that what Rhoades did to women, he did to women. We both had our own systems, our own rituals, and our own beliefs about what people were really like and how they acted under pressure. That ride turned out to be fine. In it, she's sitting in the backseat of a car. I lived among artists in the Lower East Side squats. It was a solution that worked for both of us and looked like redemption but didn't last. "Well," said Lee, sitting back after I finished, "you're probably right. She knew how to survive. He pled guilty to the first degree murder of 14-year-old Regina Walters in 1992 after investigators found haunting photos of the teenager in his apartment. That first night, my boyfriend and I stayed in an abandoned barn in Maryland. This obviously doesn't recommend the waitress's judgment, but at least some of the credit has to go to Rhoades. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. Friend, 43, says she wants "California voters to know what kind of offenders are on death row," men like Robert Boyd Rhoades, who sodomized, tortured and killed 8-year-old Michael Lyons two . I only ran about a hundred yards before I turned and hid, because I didn't know if I was being chased and needed to see. His trucking logs place him in the area of fifty unsolved murders in the three years prior to his arrest alone. "He liked people to think he was in uniform," she said. This kit included numerous sex toys, chains, whips, fishhooks, pins, and other items used to inflict on his captives. Read More: Where is Robert Ben Rhoades Now? And then you were still a prostitute. When he grew tired of her, he choked her to death with a garrote made of baling wire (via The Daily Nonpareil). When the Illinois state trooper who was trying to identify the body of Regina Walters, the girl Rhoades left in that barn, put her forensic description out on the national teletype, he was totally unprepared for the response. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Why didn't I go to anyone? Walters, however, did not have such a quick and painless death. "You see that, Debbie," he whispered in her ear. Jailed for kidnapping and assault, Rhoades had his house and truck combed over by investigators, who made some gruesome discoveries. But his insistence that everything on board was consensual wasn't going to go without investigation by Miller, especially when a search of Rhoades revealed a loaded handgun. Rhoades had been arrested in early 1990 for a similar kidnapping in Houston, in which he kept an 18-year-old girl in the cab of his truck for two weeks, shaving her pubic hair . Candace Walsh and her husband Douglas Zyskowski were hitchhiking when Rhoades' picked them up in a truck stop. Rhoades, for instance, used guns and ligature strangulation and probably knives, too. Criminals. I expected that to be the end of it, but I got another letter. And while I was getting more adept at survival, he was getting more adept at killing. Instagram: @openshuddetspodcast. Watching the driver of my truck walk back across the wet asphalt, a second thought arose: It could be him. All That's Interesting tells us that chains hung from the ceiling, used to fasten his victims in place in agonizing positions. The paper records had been destroyed for file space, and so nothing from the 1980s remained. Rhoades picked her up along with her boyfriend, Ricky Jones, in February of 1990. If Rhoades hadn't been stopped by a patrolman on I-10 in Casa Grande, Ariz., in 1990, his crimes might never have been discovered. Most say she's a prostitute and that it's a "transaction gone bad." She occasionally speaks on domestic violence at conferences and in classrooms at AM. He will die in prison.". His truck is said to have contained a homemade torture chamber. A man from the restaurant ran out and started yelling for everyone to stay away as a small crowd gathered around the Dumpster in the rain. Police photo. Robert "Bob" Berdella (also known as known as The Kansas City Butcher and The Collector) was a serial killer and torturer who documented his sinister slayings in photographs. Also like me, Regina became dependent upon the grace of truck drivers. "Wait a minute. The ruling went on to question the admissibility of eyewitness testimony. This spring a friend sent a news story link about a serial killer with the subject line "Is this your guy?" Every trucker I ever met had a gun, so the knife seemed significant. All rights reserved. Nothing came up, but that wasn't too surprising. It was a woman, probably in her midfifties. Officers later discovered this was the name Rhoades, who had been involved in BDSM for years, went by when he used his CB radio to communicate with his fellow truckers. Recently, the New Jersey State Supreme Court handed down a statement on memory, describing it as complex and often unreliable. 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and her boyfriend Ricky Lee Jones had run away from their homes and like Roberts first victims, they were hitchhiking when he picked them up. Rhoades was a long-haul trucker, in jail since 1990, who had recently been convicted of a couple of new "cold cases." I didn't recognize him. Several days later, though, heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, I got picked up by another trucker who was not fine. But I thought about what she'd said"It would just be my word against his," which was clearly followed by the unvoiced thought: And who is going to believe me? The question of what you do with your old SWAT jacket when you retire had never entered my mind. While not all fifty cases have been tied to Rhoades yet and Rhoades himself has admitted to only three murders, the FBI has strong reason to believe that at his peak he was killing one to three women a month. Though his first confirmed murders didn't occur until 1990, one woman may have barely escaped with her life the year before. Like Regina, I also had a little journal and probably wrote something in it that night, because it was far too cold to sleep. Rhoades was first arrested when an Arizona state trooper found a screaming woman named Lisa Pennal* chained in the back of his cab. 16. She brought the police right back to Rhoades's truck but then balked at pressing charges, so they had to let him go. Without fake ID, I couldn't stay in a shelter. Robert Benjamin Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. Holes in the ozone layer. ", "That sure sounds like Bob. "Bob was obsessed with how they used an imaginary secret society to keep her from running away," Davis said. Investigators from various law enforcement agencies along his route poured over his driving logs. Rhoades is additionally suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than 50 . Robert Ben Rhoades Popularity . He must have seemed okay or I wouldn't have gotten in the truck with him. However, she fell asleep shortly after climbing into the vehicle, and when she awoke, she found Rhoades had placed restraints around her wrists and ankles. ", I had a vision of Lisa Pennal as a truck-stop Kali roaming the back lots in her denim skirt and fuzzy slippers with an ozone hole for a halo. October 20, 2022. But, months later, she learned that Robert wasnt a pilot. Her facial expression could be described as a combination of desperation and abject fear. He welcomed me into his spacious living room. Picture taken by the killer of Regina Kay Walters before her murder. 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